It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Allston, and 23 of the area's best bands have joined together to celebrate with a compilation. Now in its fourth run, A Very Allston Christmas is a perfect blend of classic and cool. Magic Magic, who have participated in every installment of the series, kick off volume four with a warm, lo-fi cover of "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas." What they take away from the classic version in their stripped-down vocals and harmonies, they add in new 8-bit-adjacent sounds. Other highlights from the compilation include Holiday Music's "Family Tree," School Shoes' "In The Bleak Midwinter," and Eggy Benedict's "Christmas Always Makes Me Cry." The compilation is available for purchase on Bandcamp, and all of the proceeds will go towards Bridge Over Troubled Waters -- a Boston-based organization devoted to providing necessary services to at-risk, homeless, and runaway youth. - Lilly Milman

Shake the rust off some tired old tracks and discover some new ones with A Very Allston Christmas Vol. 4 below.

The newest single “New Jazz” (streaming below) from the Boston-based trio BROADBAND is the kind of song that leaves you with the unquenchable desire to do something, even if you’re not sure what that something is. From the first few seconds, the melody begins escalating, twisting and turning through twinkling guitars and exhilarating vocals. Even though the track pushes four minutes, it never loses its sense of urgency; it feels like a flash of excitement, a single moment in time. If you loved the track as much as we did, see BROADBAND play live at O’Brien’s Pub with Stray Fossa, New Dakotas, and Tiffy on December 10. - Lilly Milman

Frequenters of the Lilypad in Inman Square, Cambridge are likely to recognize the Boston-based Andrew DiMarzo Trio, who played their ForeverGrow EP release show at the venue back in February. The trio, made up of core members Andrew DiMarzo, Steven Viol, and Herman Ramanado, take a classic soul vocal arrangement and infuse it with a rock-inspired twist to create music that absolutely must be seen played live. Keep an eye out for more Boston-area show announcements from the Andrew DiMarzo Trio, but until then, mark January 13 in your calendar for a show at O’Brien’s Pub that you wouldn’t want to miss.

Lucky for you, The Deli New England is premiering the live recording of the track “Our Fence” (streaming below) now. - Lilly Milman

Given that some of the members of Lowell's Daisybones have been playing together for nearly a decade, it would make sense to consider their journey to their exceptionally fine-tuned sound a slow burn. But it doesn't come across that way at all. The explosive, eruptive performances they give with every track feel completely spontaneous. Listening to their 2017 debut LP Gusto is like being trapped in a moment, one that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you out of whatever funk you've been in until you start dancing. Their most recent single "Choke" follows suit. The anthemic single is a clear example of musical growth, while retaining the same energy. It's no surprise that Daisybones was voted The Deli's artist of the month, as they're surely one of the best bands performing in New England right now. The Deli sat down with Jordan of Daisybones and talked about playing with the same people for years, joint euphemisms, influences, and musical diversity in New England.

Catch Daisybones at The Old Court in Lowell tomorrow (10.20) at 8:15 p.m., and keep an eye out for Beautymark, their next release coming out in three days (10.22).

I know that most of you met in high school, but that the band fully formed in college. Can you talk more about your origin story, and how the project has changed since then?

Jordan: A.J. and I have been playing together for almost 10 years now. We started off as the two of us playing guitar and drums in his basement, writing absolutely awful songs, but it was something. We've always been in the same project no matter what it was. After a few different members and names, we linked up with Dillon in high school and that's when we started to take it a bit more seriously. We started off by playing the classic emo/pop-punk type of stuff and wrote some absolute bangers, anthems if you will. That changed as we all grew more through music and other factors. Dillon, A.J., and I had a rad practice space that was basically an empty warehouse. We would go there for hours at a time and just write, jam, play Smash Bros. That was probably our biggest growth period in terms of writing. We harnessed all the indie rock energy we could and wrote an album under a different name. Flash forward to freshman year of college, we were starting to write new music and wanted to give ourselves a fresh start. So, we started a new band under a different name and needed something that was outside of the cookie-cutter cliche 'rock band' line up -- by that I mean just guitar, bass, drums. I had met Lucas across the hall in college. He produced music and he was a great piano player, as well. He helped us expand the sonic values of our first album and we wanted to bring that to the stage so he joined us and then daisybones was born.

Jordan: Dillon and I spent about a month at least just shooting random texts to each other. We could probably go back on our phones to that time and it's just endless messages of random words put together that had some kind of ring to it. We came up with probably 100 different band names, but none of them sounded right or were too long, or they were already band names. It seemed like nothing worked. I started to just take the names we had and reorganize the words, and I texted Dillon 'daisybones'. The next day he texted me back saying, "that works. its like euphemism for a joint." And that was that.

Are there any bands or albums that heavily influenced your music-making?

Jordan: I think people could put more effort into helping bands from other areas come through and tour. I hear a lot of touring bands say they struggle to get a solid show in Boston or Lowell.

What was your most memorable live show, for reasons good or bad?

Jordan: Personally one of our most memorable shows was a recent house show we played. It was the first venue we played at as Daisybones and we haven't played there in over a year. We had a basement full of people yelling our songs back at us. The crowd was very active and very hype. It was very, very fun to play.

Here at The Deli, we love to talk about gear—we even have a blog dedicated exclusively to pedals! What gear, if any, can you not perform without?

Jordan: I personally have a lot of Earth Quaker Devices on my board. The Hoofreaper, The Afterneath are both pedals I can't play without along with the Green Rhino by Way Huge and of course the TC Electronics' Hall of Fame. Dillon has an absolute boss set up of a Hall of Fame patched into a Big Muff. It's badass.

Former Deli New England artists of the month Birdgangs, an indie rock quartet from Boston, could be considered coastal traitors. The inform their clean take on classic rock and roll with distinctly West Coast, surfy overtones. This may be most visible in their newest single, "Greasy Spoon" (streaming below), an eclectic tune that is bursting with life. The main riff, written by lead guitarist Matt Bates, sounds like it should be soundtracking your favorite surfer movie. A completely new genre is born when it's directly juxtaposed with the grungy breaks in the track that pull you right back into a Boston basement show. The transitions are at once extremely disorienting and undeniably effective, a nascent appeal to the diverse music scene of the city. The track is also the first to be written by the band since the addition of drummer Fernando Echeverry, according to lead vocalist Jack Davis. He said, "There’s a uniting element to the process that brought the song about. I heard Matt playing the riff that ended up in the song and that was definitely what set it in motion. The lyrics tell a story of an unfortunate misunderstanding between people that leads to some awkward hilarity and delightfully unexpected batches of late-night pancakes.” Birdgangs will be playing their next live show at Opus in Salem at 9 pm. - Lilly Milman, photo by Hannah Blauner

The Deli Magazine was born in NYC's Attorney Street in 2004, in the shape of a print issue with a then unknown band on its cover, called Grizzly Bear. Ths NYC blog came in 2005, then the SF one in 2006, and then 9 more in the following years. The Deli is focused on the coverage of emerging bands and solo artists with a 100% local focus - no exceptions!